Growing your company is a challenge, and requires a coordinated effort across the entire organization. Taking your sales team to the next level could require more resources, new processes, new technology, or all of the above. Apps from the AppExchange are one way to boost the performance of your company, no matter its size and goals.

On the April edition of our Connected Leaders webinar, our own Amanda Nelson, Senior Manager of AppExchange Content and Community, chatted with sales leaders to learn about apps that helped elevate their sales teams, including::

• Mark Redgrave, Head of Marketing at Spark Digital, on behalf of Apttus

• Lindsey Nelson, VP of Sales Productivity at CareerBuilder, on behalf of Brainshark

• Dave Brown, Vice President, North America Sales at Fleetmatics, on behalf of Valgen

• Bill Holcomb, Senior Manager, Sales Operations at VMware AirWatch, on behalf of InsideSales.com

Below are tips, in combination with apps, to take your sales teams to the next level.

1. Ensure adoption is organic

Presenting your team with new technology is a challenging endeavor; however, if done correctly, it can boost the entire initiative. Fleetmatics needed a way for inside sales reps to target nearby opportunities, prospects and accounts visually on a map, manage reference selling and accelerate appointments.  Dave Brown and Fleetmatics implemented Valgen’s cfMAPP so reps could follow a consistent sales approach and grow quickly.

Brown said that cfMAPP was not simply thrust upon the team. “One of my philosophies has always been, you should never have to force an application or a tool on a salesperson. If you’re doing that, it’s probably the wrong application,” said Brown. “Our adoption has been very successful.” As a direct result of increased appointments at higher deal sizes, adoption approached 100%, and Fleetmatics saw a 15X return on their investment within 6 months.

2. Empower your sales team with relevant and updated content

As CareerBuilder shifted from a transaction-focused to a solution-focused sales process, the company also had to figure out a way to update its 1,000 sales reps on the new model. The company chose Brainshark Sales Accelerator to ensure easy creation, consistent delivery and communication of effective and engaging training content. As a result, CareerBuilder increased sales training content consumption by 48%, according to Lindsey Nelson, VP of sales productivity. Sales content is now delivered in a video format that all CareerBuilder reps can easily consume on any device in the field and in turn, helps train, prepare and equip them for any selling situation.

Nelson uses Brainshark to communicate all sorts of things to her sales team. “Anything that we need to try to effectively communicate out to the organization in a quick and simplistic way, without having to literally take reps off the sales floor or away from face-to-face time with their customers, we’ve found great values in tools like Brainshark.”

3. Keep an open mind regarding how apps can change your business

Spark Digital automated their proposal process with Apttus CPQ. Mark Redgrave said that his company cut down their complex proposal time from five weeks to two days and simple proposals down from days to one hour using Apttus. As a result, Spark Digital greatly improved their customers’ experiences, helped their team reimagine the way they sell many of their products, and increased sales 15% YOY with a smaller team.

An additional benefit of reducing proposal generation time is a decrease in time spent by the sales team on non-selling activities. Redgrave emphasized their investment and collaboration with Apttus, sharing: “We will not affect the transformation needed to deliver the financial results the market needs from us without Apttus embedded in our sales team processes.”

4. Show your team what they can gain from using a new app

VMware AirWatch sought a solution that was a sales platform, not a telemarketing tool, to help sellers be more effective and address prospects in a more efficient manner. VMware Airwatch’s Bill Holcomb realized that his inside sales reps might worry that the tool would threaten or eliminate their jobs, so they rolled out PowerDialer by InsideSales.com slowly, letting the team opt in to use it for efficiency first while initially keeping their metrics the same.

Holcomb said that when his team started seeing how InsideSales.com improved their performance, adoption quickly grew. “Over a couple months, [the InsideSales.com platform]  did a great job of really upping the output of our sellers,” he said. “They were no longer wary because they quickly saw that it was to their benefit as well. It made it easier to hit quota and get to goal.”

Don’t forget to register for the next Connected Leaders webinar, “Your Customers Say Thanks: AppExchange Apps for Customer Service.”